Introduction

The CSV plugin creates out of a CSV file, events which can be displayed in DPCalendar. The file can be locally on your web server it can be a link to a website that automatically produces the proper formatted output.

It can also export events, bookings, tickets or locations, either from the front end lists or the back end administration tables.

File Format

The CSV plugin comes with an example file which has a structure that works out of the box. For every CSV calendar you can define a column name which is mapped to an event attribute. For example if the title of the event is in a column with the name csv_title then fill that value as option in the external calendar configuration.

The following example should give you a rough idea about the structure. The first row defines always the columns of the file.

"title","alias","rrule","start_date","end_date","all_day","location","color","url","description","show_end_time"
"Yearly recurring","yearly","FREQ=YEARLY;UNTIL=20220514T000000Z","2019-01-01 00:00:00","2019-12-31 23:59:59","0",,"27CC37",,"Sample description",1
"Single day","single-event",,"2019-12-29 22:00:00","2007-12-29 22:20:00","0",,"A32929",,,1
"All day","allday",,"2019-12-29 00:00:00","2017-12-30 00:00:00","1",,"A32929",,,1
"Weekly recurring","weekly","FREQ=WEEKLY;BYDAY=TU,TH,SA","2017-12-10 20:00:00","2017-12-10 22:30:00","0","New York",,"http://www.digital-peak.com","This event also ends at 22:30 but the show end time flag is set to false, so it is not shown.",0
"Dayli recurring","dayli","FREQ=DAILY","2017-12-11 20:00:00","2017-12-11 21:30:00","0","London",,"http://jooml.digital-peak.com","<p>Desc</p><ul><li>with HTML</li><li>content</li></ul><p><strong>Strong text</strong></p>",1

Remarks

The following list gives some practical hints about the data in the CSV file:

• The date must be in ISO 8601 format
• All day events must have the end date one day later as this is how ical data is represented.
• The alias setting is only used during import
• The timezones must be set correctly
• The CSV structure must be readable by a CSV parser

Main options

• Uri
  Per calendar there is a field which defines the uri of the file. If the file is on your server it must have proper permissions to access it. Make sure that the file is accessible to DPCalendar through your Joomla hosting server. If the file is not physically on your server you can define an url like http://example.com/data/test.csv. To get remote files the server must be able to open connections to the remote server. Ask your hosting company first if outbound connections are included in your hosting plan.
• Timezone
  When the events in the CSV file are defined in a different timezone, it's possible to adjust that parameter here.
• SSL Verification
  Ensures that the SSL connection (HTTPS) is a valid one. This requires a trusted certificate. If this is not the case, then the admin can disable the option. But it is a security issue as the connection can't be trusted anymore.

Libre Office, Openoffice or Excel

CSV files are easier to work with using Excel or Libre Office spreadsheets. In either case the file will be broken down into cells. Make sure to always save the file as a CSV (comma separated values) file. Not as a spreadsheet, xlsx or ods, file. These are binary files and can't be read by this plugin.

DPCalendar Options

These settings are the same for every calendar configured in the plugin.

Plugin Options

Plugin Options